The next morning at sunrise we dropped slowly down the river in company with a fleet of fishing-smacks. The misty dawn was incomparable. The distances seemed enormous. The faintest southeast breeze stirred the atmosphere, but not the mirror of the water. All the tints of the pearl were mingled in the dreaming landscape. No prospect anywhere that was not flawlessly beautiful, enchanted with expectation of the day. The unmeasured mud-flats steamed as primevally as they must have steamed two thousand years ago, and herons stood sentry on them as they must have stood then. Incredibly far away, a flash of pure glittering white, a sea-gull! The whole picture was ideal.
At seven o’clock we had reached Goldhanger Creek, beset with curving water-weeds. And the creek appeared to lead into the very arcana of the mist. We anchored, and I rowed to its mouth. A boat sailed in, scarcely moving, scarcely rippling the water, and it was in charge of two old white-haired fishermen. They greeted me.
“Is this creek long?” I asked. A pause. They both gazed at the creek with the beautiful name, into which they were sailing, as though they had never seen it before.
“Is there anything up there?” Another pause. The boat was drawing away from me.
“Aye, there’s oysters up there.” The boat and the men withdrew imperceptibly into the silver haze. I returned to the yacht. Just below, at Tollesbury pier, preparations were in progress for another village regatta; and an ineffable melancholy seemed to distil out of the extreme beauty of the estuary, for this was the last regatta, and this our last cruise, of the season.
End of Project Gutenberg's From The Log of The "Velsa", by Arnold Bennett